Mathematics for the interested outsider

It turns out that the de Rham cohomology spaces are all contravariant functors on the category of smooth manifolds. We’ve even seen how it acts on smooth maps. All we really need to do is check that it plays nice with compositions.

So let’s say we have smooth maps and , which give rise to pullbacks and . All we really have to do is show that , because we already know that passing from chain maps to the induced maps on homology is functorial.

About this weblog

This is mainly an expository blath, with occasional high-level excursions, humorous observations, rants, and musings. The main-line exposition should be accessible to the “Generally Interested Lay Audience”, as long as you trace the links back towards the basics. Check the sidebar for specific topics (under “Categories”).

I’m in the process of tweaking some aspects of the site to make it easier to refer back to older topics, so try to make the best of it for now.